NINETEEN
ZAN
I’ve never seenLily this scared, not when we were in danger with the sandworms mere hours ago, and not when I found her hanging upside down by the foot, facing off against a giant angry bird and a strange but gentler giant bird companion.
She wasn’t happy then, not by any means, nor was she happy when we were hiking together and simply surviving when we were first dropped here.
Nor was she pleased with the original trials that the original production team had set up for this.
But whatever she saw in those reanimated corpses has terrified her.
“They’re dead,” I tell her. “They can’t hurt you. They’re not real.”
“They can hurt me. They can,” she says, shivering into my body, her face buried in the crook of my neck.
I don’t like that she is so scared.
“Why do you fear the dead?”
It is without a doubt in my mind that those things that are traveling toward us are corpses. They smell long dead and strange, some sort of refrigeration coursing through their bodies. It is disturbing, that much is sure, but terrifying in the way that Lily is right now? Absolutely not.
“They would likely fall apart with one swing of my talons,” I tell her, trying to soothe her.
She makes a gagging sound, and it doesn’t take me long to realize I’ve made it worse.
“Alright, well their so-called human ladder is growing taller. I’m going to jump now.”
“You’re going to hurt yourself,” she says, but it’s half-hearted, she wants away from those things as fast as she can, and I am willing to do anything to make sure that happens.
I pace the length of the strange wall, gauging the distance as best I can, then run, trying to get up to speed, before I jump.
Without my wing fully functioning, I manage to get in one good flap but nearly fall short.
I manage to rock back to my toes and the ball of my foot before I can stagger backward.
We’ve left the churning mass of dead bodies behind us, but there’s still the last wall.
“It worked,” I tell her, my voice hoarse.
She’s still shaking against me, and it makes me so angry that I wish I could rage and burn this whole world down and get her to safety.
Burning the world… it sparks an idea in my mind, a dangerous idea, one that could ruin me, but if it gets Lily safe, then it’s worth it.
A last resort, to be certain.
“Nine more to go,” I tell her, ignoring the pain in my wing. The way it’s racing up through the bone, through my shoulder,down my back, the way that I’m certain that it is not right. Not at all.
I’ve suffered breaks before. I’ve suffered damage to my wings. But I have a sinking feeling that whatever was in that worm saliva has done something to me.
Perhaps the last resort for me is the only resort for Lily’s safety. At this point, I may as well be slowing her down. Dead weight.
“Don’t do it,” she says, whispering the words so quiet that I barely hear them.
I don’t listen to her.
I run again, not taking as much time to judge the distance, then leap as hard as I can.
I’ve tucked my sore wing in, buffeting just the one, and we manage to make it.
